PDGA Player Rating available for Leagues

The PDGA will be providing the resources for players to earn PDGA rated rounds playing in their hometown weekly leagues. If you already have leagues, you'll be able to continue running them pretty much how you've been running them. The PDGA will simply provide the ratings service for your league players.

ďOkay, so how much this is going to cost?Ē All players will pay $1 per week. There's no extra fee for nonmembers. League Directors keep half (50 cents) for admin costs, final standings payouts, course improvements, charities, etc and the PDGA gets the other half (50 cents). We feel splitting the fees with the League Director is essential to help strengthen local disc golf clubs and help with course maintenance to keep our courses looking nice.

League Directors will determine your weekly league entry fee. If you want to play for $2, $5, $20, or FREE thatís up to your league. The PDGA league sanctioning fee will be just $25 for a 12-week league. The PDGA is not going to track payouts for leagues. Itís up to the League Directors how they wish to go about handling their leagues (meaning Ams can accept cash without losing Am status).

The March 2012 roll out will be the first phase of the program. We are requesting that all events be standard singles play until we get the system established. Once we get everything working smoothly we hope to provide the option for other formats including handicapped, global ratings based, team and even doubles leagues. This may take some time to develop all of these formats. But once we get more players getting rated rounds then it will be much easier to establish the parameters for how these other formats will work. Plus the IT side of things will need a little time to incorporate handling the different formats.

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I dig the concept, but I think this is going to cause serious ratings inflation.

Why do you think that is? Do you think courses tend to play easier in weeklies? Or is it because there will be a different group/type of players (not sure how this factors in). Perhaps players would end up shooting better scores because they're playing the same course on a weekly basis.

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Why do you think that is? Do you think courses tend to play easier in weeklies? Or is it because there will be a different group/type of players (not sure how this factors in). Perhaps players would end up shooting better scores because they're playing the same course on a weekly basis.

I would suspect that *if* rated leagues are going to have an impact on the accuracy of the PDGA rating system, it will be due to a higher percentage of player rated rounds coming from 'home' courses than before. I seem to recall a PDGA rating recommendation that the system is "accurate enough" at 8 total rated rounds including at least four total courses. The league system could dramatically increase the number of rated rounds in a year at a single course, not necessarily representative of how a player plays overall (just how they play on that one course). I honestly don't know how much of an impact it will actually have on ratings, however.. after all, probably most of the players in the league will have similar 'home course advantage', meaning better scores all around, and not higher ratings.

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This shouldn't create across the board ratings inflation since, theoretically, each round will be averaged against the ratings of the PDGA players present. The only effect I could see would be that it would strongly benefit people who don't play other PDGA events whose entire rating might be based largely off their local weekly league. I don't know how I feel about this concept, I think part of the reward of organizing and running a PDGA event is the inclusion of ratings, I might prefer to see a league rating and an isolated PDGA-event rating that might be more accurate as PDGA-event rounds tend to have more rated players included in each round.

Comment

Ratings are a zero sum calculation so there cannot be any ratings inflation overall. It will be interesting to see how much the SSA gets depressed as a result of home course knowledge. While some players may be able to boost their rating a little bit, in the case of Ams, it means they may be somewhat over rated and have to play in a higher division on weekend tourneys. So no advantage other than bragging rights.

In the case of some local pros trying to boost their rating playing in leagues, that will just mean they may be over rated when traveling and playing in bigger events. That's just more rating points for the top guys like Feldberg and Avery to snap up at those events to bring the local pro's rating back to earth.

In summary, there are some elements that could boost some ratings and some that might depress them. But with the zero sum ratings calculation their net impact will be minimal overall.

Comment

Ratings are a zero sum calculation so there cannot be any ratings inflation overall. It will be interesting to see how much the SSA gets depressed as a result of home course knowledge. While some players may be able to boost their rating a little bit, in the case of Ams, it means they may be somewhat over rated and have to play in a higher division on weekend tourneys. So no advantage other than bragging rights.

In the case of some local pros trying to boost their rating playing in leagues, that will just mean they may be over rated when traveling and playing in bigger events. That's just more rating points for the top guys like Feldberg and Avery to snap up at those events to bring the local pro's rating back to earth.

In summary, there are some elements that could boost some ratings and some that might depress them. But with the zero sum ratings calculation their net impact will be minimal overall.

Hello Chuck,
A couple of questions to clear things up.

If two leagues play on the same course the same night but submit results independently, one with all players rated higher than 1000 and one with ams all rated under 940 will they end up with the same rating for the same score ( I mean exact same rating)?
What if there are not enough propagators in the amateur league to provide accurate round ratings?
Is the PDGA planning to use these leagues to develop a semi-course rating to be used in the Course Directory?

Thanks for coming on here and answering questions.

PDGA #25296Stumptown #34

Comment

If we know both leagues were played on the same night, we would combine scores from both to do the official ratings so everyone did get the same rating for the same score. Whether the SSAs for each group would come out the same if done separately has more to do with the number of propagators in each group and normal statistical variance than the average rating of either league. In other words, it's 50/50 whether the SSA of one group would be higher or lower than the other group on any given night.

We cannot calculate ratings properly on a league night if fewer than 5 players with established ratings complete rounds where everyone has shot no worse than 70 points below their rating.

The league SSA data will be added to the tournament course data for the course or may be the first SSA data produced for the course in some cases. It will be used for producing ratings in the PDGA smartphone apps. The question for many is whether the SSA during league will be 2-3 shots lower than tournament days. We'll be evaluating what happens once we get a lot more league SSA data to see if this actually happens.

One would think players play better in leagues on their home course. But I'm not sure we've seen that happen with the limited data we've looked at over the years. So this will be an interesting referendum on the stability of SSA values for courses under similar weather but different competitive conditions and player course knowledge.

An interesting fact related to this: one would think players would shoot the same course layout a little better on average in the afternoon than the morning at a tournament based on what they learned in the morning round. However, it doesn't happen. Our data indicates that there's no statistical improvement in the afternoon when the same player pool plays the same layout under similar weather conditions. That's what leads me to believe that league SSAs may not turn out to be much lower than tournament SSAs.

I think players may remember more of their hot rounds on the course since they play it more often especially casual rounds. But the reality may be that most players don't average any better in competition on their home course than other courses they've played only a few times. We'll see what happens.

Comment

i bet that the PDGA player rating that you get from these "sanctioned" leagues will not count for your actual PDGA rating. Its going to be more of a barometer for how you stand on a certain course with a certain SSA.
umm... kindof like a bowling league. you can still get a rating, but its not going toward your offical PBA rating.
thats what i would hope is the case at least.

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i bet that the PDGA player rating that you get from these "sanctioned" leagues will not count for your actual PDGA rating. Its going to be more of a barometer for how you stand on a certain course with a certain SSA.
umm... kindof like a bowling league. you can still get a rating, but its not going toward your offical PBA rating.
thats what i would hope is the case at least.

^ Sounds like a good idea

Read this ^

Comment

Your PDGA rating will include rounds rated during leagues. There's no difference in what rating a player averages at Worlds/NTs/A tiers versus B-tiers versus C-tiers. There's probably more difference in the competition environment between NTs and C-tiers than there will be between C-tiers versus leagues.

Comment

Your PDGA rating will include rounds rated during leagues. There's no difference in what rating a player averages at Worlds/NTs/A tiers versus B-tiers versus C-tiers. There's probably more difference in the competition environment between NTs and C-tiers than there will be between C-tiers versus leagues.

Besides, more data points means a more accurate look at your true rating. A rating based on 50 rated rounds is more accurate than a rating based on 15...

Hath this whole world been mired in madness?
Remain ye men of faculty complete,
Of full arithmetic and prudence fair,
Attending to our noble bond and contract?
Or does here stand the last remaining man
To give a fig for rules and order yet,
No noble savage, but a stave unbroken
Who loves the law and bids it no misdeed.
Iíll not be bent to lawlessness. Mark it nought, if we be men of honour.

Comment

Your PDGA rating will include rounds rated during leagues. There's no difference in what rating a player averages at Worlds/NTs/A tiers versus B-tiers versus C-tiers. There's probably more difference in the competition environment between NTs and C-tiers than there will be between C-tiers versus leagues.